One aspect of our job is to review lessons and materials and anticipate mistakes that students will make questions that they might have. In a sense, we need to plan for common misunderstandings and make sure that we are addressing those immediately in our lesson. On this page I will begin to add more and more materials to address common mistakes and misunderstandings that students make that can be used in the classroom to help explain why certain things work and others do not.
Common Student Questions:
1. When dividing a fraction by another fraction, why do we multiply by the reciprocal?
- Here is a graphic organizer which approaches this question by building up a series of understandings first by explaining division to be easily represented as a fraction and then building from there.
- Here is a math forum that offers up lots of interesting explanations. This particular explanation is rather good because it uses pictures to illustrate what is happening. So, this one might be good for some of the visual learners in your classroom.
- Here is another website that helps to explain inverting and multiplying by showing how certain numbers cancel out.
- And in case you are looking for something fun to show your class, here is a video with a catchy dance made by some eighth graders to help students remember how to divide fractions.
One aspect of our job is to review lessons and materials and anticipate mistakes that students will make questions that they might have. In a sense, we need to plan for common misunderstandings and make sure that we are addressing those immediately in our lesson. On this page I will begin to add more and more materials to address common mistakes and misunderstandings that students make that can be used in the classroom to help explain why certain things work and others do not.
Common Student Questions:
1. When dividing a fraction by another fraction, why do we multiply by the reciprocal?- Here is a graphic organizer which approaches this question by building up a series of understandings first by explaining division to be easily represented as a fraction and then building from there.
- Here is a math forum that offers up lots of interesting explanations. This particular explanation is rather good because it uses pictures to illustrate what is happening. So, this one might be good for some of the visual learners in your classroom.
- Here is another website that helps to explain inverting and multiplying by showing how certain numbers cancel out.
- And in case you are looking for something fun to show your class, here is a video with a catchy dance made by some eighth graders to help students remember how to divide fractions.